Monday, September 27, 2004

Report from Haiti

In Haiti. Plane got in this a.m. at 11 a.m. Or was it noon? All screwed up on time, they're an hour behind us and I have no sense of time b/c of the hurricane. Blown off course, you might say.

Tomorrow heading for Gonaives. We're going to try to make it up there. There's a huge mess b/c it rained Saturday and all the flooding that receded has now returned. You have to hire guides to walk you through the road or you might drive into a crater and submerge and get into real trouble. The road, they say, is littered with relief trucks that got stuck.

Bad news... more bodies emerging. Ones that were swept out to sea last week now are returning to the city. It's pretty bad, we are told, and the gangs are still looting relief trucks, preventing real aid from getting to the hungry. Some people haven't eaten in 5 days. It looks like there may be a food crisis lurking on the horizon.

Staying at the Montana. Beautiful hotel, stayed here many times, lots of polished mahogany, unique rooms, and modern conveniences like the internet here. And we're going to a town where they have no food, water, electricity (Catherine said they have one generator running in the whole town, it must look like a beacon at night, a lighthouse amid chaos) and people are going hungry.

As mom used to say, we'll see. This is kinda weird. Going from wiping off my forehead that we survived yet another hurricane, and now being in Haiti where the very same hurricane, when it was a tropical storm, has killed so many and caused so much suffering and misery.